Goutam Dutta
Goutam Dutta, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India, and a longtime member of INFORMS, was elected a Fellow of the Operational Research Society of India (ORSI). He becomes one of just 30 Fellows in the 60-year history of the Society. Professor Dutta, who teaches in the Production and Quantitative Methods area, was also elected president-elect of ORSI.
Richard Larson
Richard Larson – MIT professor, INFORMS past president and widely known as “Dr. Queue” in the operations research community – was a primary source in a Nov. 23 New York Times article, “Why Stand in Line on Black Friday? The Psychology Explained.” Larson told the Times, “These queues are quite different than the usual annoying ones we encounter day to day at the ATM or in the subway” … “The habit makes sense, in some weird way” and … “once a year, they’re exhilarating.”
Abdolmajid Yolmeh, a student in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Rutgers University, was named the winner of the 9th Annual Student Contest held by the New Jersey Chapter of INFORMS. Yolmeh was honored for his work on “A Two-Stage Invest-Defend Game: Balancing Strategic and Operational Decisions.” The research was done with Professor Melike Baykal-Gürsoy.
The Student Contest is open to all students who are a resident of New Jersey or who are attending a New Jersey college. Extended abstracts were submitted and three finalists were selected. The finalists presented their work at a New Jersey Chapter meeting in October, where a panel of judges selected the winner.
New Jersey Chapter Student Contest finalists and judges (from left): Marc Meketon, Amir Sadrian, Ziyi Wang, Abdolmajid Yolmeh, Changxi Wang, David Hunt and Pablo Zafra.